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In honor of 24-70s everywhere
To be completely upfront, if this thread is fruitful, my intent is to collate this post and some interesting replies (as quotes) on my own web site.
I was first drawn to photography because I wanted to express myself. Of course, I had no idea what I wanted to say. On a day to day basis, I was always piqued by interesting frames in the world around me and I was always trying to tell people, usually my spouse, about the interesting thing I had seen, often without success. Realizing that much of what interested me was visual, I took up photography and went through the various learning stages, first taking pictures of everything, then narrowing my scope as my interest exerted themselves.
Eventually I became involved in a quite good online community and one of the other members posted this paragraph below (in a slightly less coherent manner) and this has become my mantra.**
No matter what I end up shooting I find myself using this approach and thus what I do shoot becomes limited because if I can't do it 'my way', I have no interest in doing it at all.
There are two issues that have occurred to me in this realm.
First, I don't think one can teach the kind of sensibility that allows a person to take good street shots, being able to see a meaningful shot coming and to 'see' how to shoot it and get in the best possible place is not solely a skill but an innate talent, a sensitivity. I've shot with a lot of people and you can show them the mechanics of it, the skills, but if that undefined little talent isn't there, it won't be. An individual may be able to develop a nascent talent by taking huge lots of pictures and analyzing why they 'work' or not but learning how to from someone. I don't believe so.
The second issue is style. Although styles of street shooting are even more difficult to define (" riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" Sir Winston Churchill describing Russia),what is clear is that style and equipment are inter-related and that those two are probably dependent on personality. I shoot a 24-70 on a FF body, I don't mind being seen and I rarely shoot from any long distances.
I want somehow to capture the intimacy of being relatively close to the subject(s) and that 24-70 range of focal lengths suits my purposes. Occasionally I will 'snipe' from a distance when it works better but those longer shots are perhaps 5% of what I keep.
There seems to be a complexity and immediacy to the scene when the photographer is closer, more 'in it' that adds to the impact of the shot. The flattening of the scene when the focal length is longer often makes the frame less dynamic.
On the other hand, there is the school of 'ambush' street photographers who think that popping up very close in someone's face and catching them unawares is somehow a valid statement. Well, that does produce a kind of intimacy, like an assault, but rather than capturing a moment, I think that kind of technique just reproduces the same scene over and over. The photographer is creating a moment that is false, inauthentic.
All that above may be retrospective rationalization for shooting the way I do with what I do, but I think not............
_______________________________________________________
** none of this is to imply that I think I am a great or even a good street photographer. It is what I choose to work at.
To be completely upfront, if this thread is fruitful, my intent is to collate this post and some interesting replies (as quotes) on my own web site.
I was first drawn to photography because I wanted to express myself. Of course, I had no idea what I wanted to say. On a day to day basis, I was always piqued by interesting frames in the world around me and I was always trying to tell people, usually my spouse, about the interesting thing I had seen, often without success. Realizing that much of what interested me was visual, I took up photography and went through the various learning stages, first taking pictures of everything, then narrowing my scope as my interest exerted themselves.
Eventually I became involved in a quite good online community and one of the other members posted this paragraph below (in a slightly less coherent manner) and this has become my mantra.**
No matter what I end up shooting I find myself using this approach and thus what I do shoot becomes limited because if I can't do it 'my way', I have no interest in doing it at all.
There are two issues that have occurred to me in this realm.
First, I don't think one can teach the kind of sensibility that allows a person to take good street shots, being able to see a meaningful shot coming and to 'see' how to shoot it and get in the best possible place is not solely a skill but an innate talent, a sensitivity. I've shot with a lot of people and you can show them the mechanics of it, the skills, but if that undefined little talent isn't there, it won't be. An individual may be able to develop a nascent talent by taking huge lots of pictures and analyzing why they 'work' or not but learning how to from someone. I don't believe so.
The second issue is style. Although styles of street shooting are even more difficult to define (" riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" Sir Winston Churchill describing Russia),what is clear is that style and equipment are inter-related and that those two are probably dependent on personality. I shoot a 24-70 on a FF body, I don't mind being seen and I rarely shoot from any long distances.
I want somehow to capture the intimacy of being relatively close to the subject(s) and that 24-70 range of focal lengths suits my purposes. Occasionally I will 'snipe' from a distance when it works better but those longer shots are perhaps 5% of what I keep.
There seems to be a complexity and immediacy to the scene when the photographer is closer, more 'in it' that adds to the impact of the shot. The flattening of the scene when the focal length is longer often makes the frame less dynamic.
On the other hand, there is the school of 'ambush' street photographers who think that popping up very close in someone's face and catching them unawares is somehow a valid statement. Well, that does produce a kind of intimacy, like an assault, but rather than capturing a moment, I think that kind of technique just reproduces the same scene over and over. The photographer is creating a moment that is false, inauthentic.
All that above may be retrospective rationalization for shooting the way I do with what I do, but I think not............
_______________________________________________________
** none of this is to imply that I think I am a great or even a good street photographer. It is what I choose to work at.
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